Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
on you to keep them happy and occupied. Having a friend along can take the pressure
off and give you some much-needed breathing room.
If you decide to allow a friend to accompany you, limit the selection to children
you know really well and whose parents you also know. Your Walt Disney World va-
cation is not the time to include “my friend Eddie from school” whom you've never
met. Your children's friends who have spent time in your home will have a sense of
your parenting style, and you will have a sense of their personality, behavior, and
compatibility with your family. Assess the prospective child's potential to fit in well
on a long trip. Is he or she polite, personable, fun to be with, and reasonably mature?
Does he or she relate well to you and to the other members of your family?
Because a Walt Disney World vacation is not, for most of us, a spur-of-the-mo-
ment thing, you should have adequate time to evaluate potential candidate friends. A
trip to the mall including a meal in a sit-down restaurant will tell you volumes about
thefriend.Likewise, inviting thefriendtosharedinnerwiththefamily andthenspend
the night will provide a lot of relevant information. Ideally this type of evaluation
should take place early on in the normal course of family events, before you discuss
the possibility of a friend joining you on your vacation. This will allow you to size
thingsupwithoutyourchild(orthefriend)realizing thatanevaluation istakingplace.
By seizing the initiative, you can guide the outcome. Ann, a Springfield, Ohio,
mom, for example, anticipated that her 12-year-old son would ask to take a friend
on their vacation. As she pondered the various friends her son might propose, she
came up with four names. One, an otherwise sweet child, had a medical condition that
Ann felt unqualified to monitor or treat. A second friend was overly aggressive with
younger children and was often socially inappropriate for his age. Two other friends,
Chuck and Marty, with whom she'd had a generally positive experience, were good
candidates forthe trip. After orchestrating some opportunities to spend time with each
of the boys, she made her decision and asked her son, “Would you like to take Marty
with us to Disney World?” Her son was delighted, and Ann had diplomatically pree-
mpted having to turn down friends her son might have proposed.
Werecommendthatyoudotheinviting,insteadofyourchild,andthatyouextend
the invitation to the parent (to avoid disappointment, you might want to sound out
the friend's parent before broaching the issue with your child). Observing this recom-
mendation will allow you to query the friend's parents concerning food preferences,
